"Aap kahaan se hain?Where are you from?" The sun was low in the sky as the pair cut through the waves. It had been the young mare who had spoken the words, her melodic voice thick with an accent that gave her away as a foreigner, if the words themselves, and her lithe body, with her curled ears, didn't already mark her as different enough. The question had been for her smaller companion, with whom she was keeping pace as they swam, trying to mask her worry as he lagged further and further behind.
The stallion faltered in the water, head dipping dangerously low, so that he coughed on a mouthful of brine.
“Khan!" Within moments, the mare was at his side, blue eyes wide as she frantically tried to assess him.
"It hurts, Shani, I can't..."
She dismissed his fear with a snort, reaching to shove her muzzle beneath his and lift it from where it dropped toward the surface of the sea again. "Mere saath raho,Stay with me," she asked of him, maneuvering so that her body served as a bulwark for him, something solid to lean against. A thread of anxiety wove itself through her tone as she spoke again, feeling very much out of her depth in this strage new land. "Kaun sa dveep?Which island?"
Khan was too quiet, his face drawn with the pain that sapped what little strength he had left.
“Jasper -" Shani gasped, finding herself short of breath, hoping that the name would grant the injured male a measure of much-needed clarity, “- where?!" And her heart throbbed with relief when he stirred and automatically made for one of the smaller islands.
Khan barely made it beyond the tideline before his left foreleg gave beneath him, and sent him tumbling into the sand with a squeal that he tried to bite down on. He started shivering and attempted to right himself as Shani hastily made her way to his side. The pale faced buckskin tried to let loose a call, but he struggled to draw a deep breath, and what little sound he was able to make was hoarse and hushed. "Call, and he will come," he said weakly to his dark patched companion.
Shani did just that, but the first figure to appear out of the dusk was not the one she'd hoped for. With Khan exhausted, unable to stand, and knowing so little about this terrain - who was friend and who was foe, the young mare shook off her own exhaustion and surged forward over the sand to block the path of the stallion who'd appeared first, determined not to let him get near her friend.
"Nahin!No!" she commanded with vehemence, evidently at ease with the way the sand shifted beneath her hooves, if her instinctive movements and subtle corrections were anything to go by. "Aap nahin.Not you." But not wanting to paint herself as a challenger, and unsure as to how clearly she'd be understood, she gestured with her muzzle back toward Khan over her shoulder, not breaking eye contact with unknown male.
“Jasper only," Shani said, softer, her expression furrowing as she carefully wrapped her tongue around the syllables in the Common language, her ink-dark ears relaxing from their backwards angle to tilt forward with something edging towards open curiosity.
And when Jasper appeared? She turned to quietly observe the reunion, before edging further along the beach (but pressing no deeper into the territory), wanting to give her friend what little privacy he could have on a stretch of open sand, and found her gaze drawn to the stranger she'd moved to meet earlier, searching through her memory - had Khan even taught her how to ask the question that she felt burning on her tongue in her own language: what is your name?
Khan, for his part, held himself together until Jasper appeared, as though, all this time he'd had to be strong, but now that he was finally home, and the one that he loved was still here, still as ready as ever to welcome him back, he didn't need to pretend anymore. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he sobbed, struggling and failing to stand to get to the golden Guardian sooner.
Hampered by a deep gash across his left shoulder, Khan fidgeted, anxious and overcome, right there in the sand of the Prairie's stretch of beach, carving furrows in the damp sand with his right forehoof. "I p-promise... Never meant to leave, but Jaya..."
His chest heaved and he stretched forward, desperate to press close to the stallion he loved, seeking reassurance, and comforted by the sight of him, the scent of his skin and the sound of his voice. "Jasper, I- " Khan swallowed, his vision clouded by unshed tears.
He'd left, all the same, no matter his intentions, and so much time had passed... What right did he have to come back now and expect anything?
He had no right.
But all he knew was that he was safe here. He was home. "J-Jasper..." All he knew was that, after being homesick, and heartsick for so long, he finally felt whole.
And he'd be happy, just lingering at the fringes of the gold and white stallion's presence. Khan felt he could not ask for any more than that. Not after leaving so abruptly the way he had. Not now that he was so weak and wounded - injured in a manner not unlike the way his mother had been, years ago, that had prevented her from leaving Luthien to come back to him.
Ashamed, of what he perceived as a betrayal - abandoning Jasper to chase after his wayward sister. More than that, though... The poor state he was in, near half-drowned, lame, crippled by a weakness that he feared would never leave him... "I want so much for you," Khan rasped, voice thick with sorrow. "And I have so little to give."
Just my heart. Just my heart that's always been yours, and always will be... |